Clarify Your Assessment Goals
Key Actions
- Clarify what you want to accomplish with the assessment; this will drive your survey questions and length.
- Identify the actions you would take on the three core areas of needs assessments — activation, satisfaction and needs/priorities.
Community needs assessments should give you three crucial pieces of feedback:
(a) Activation: How are your community’s residents currently using your facilities, programming and parks?
(b) Satisfaction: How satisfied are they with the above?
(c) Needs: Beyond satisfaction levels, is your agency’s “finger on the pulse” of your community’s priorities regarding health and wellness, socialization and connection, out-of-school time programming and any other essential needs?
The distinction between satisfaction and needs is important. Your community may be satisfied with what your agency currently offers but may also have needs that are not being met. For example, residents may appreciate your current programming for seniors, while also wanting a greater variety of offerings, such as different kinds of classes or more intergenerational opportunities.
First and foremost, your needs assessment goals should drive the type of survey instrument you send out to the community. A few common reasons agencies administer needs assessments are to:
- Get feedback on a wide array of facilities, programs, parks and services
- Get feedback on a small, specific subset of the above (e.g., a single community center)
- Inform a new communications and marketing plan
In the case of number one above, you may need to ask a lot of questions to ensure you receive the most information possible about everything your agency does. The feedback will likely inform an agency-wide (or even city- or county-wide) master plan, so the data will need to be wide-reaching. Feedback for items number two and three above call for a smaller group of questions.
In all cases, needs assessments should cover activation, satisfaction and needs. Doing so ensures that you receive the most useful feedback possible from one single assessment. This distinguishes community needs assessments from shorter surveys that focus solely on customer satisfaction.
The graphic below illustrates the differences between wide-ranging and specific needs assessments.
